Updating to wp-e-commerce 3.7.5

The plugin wp-e-commerce keeps getting regular updates. There is a new update for it available in the control panel of your plugin administrative dashboard in WordPress. But before you upgrade automatically, you should read this:

The update instructions in the readme file are pretty clear. Just copy over the existing files and you should be good to go; emphasis on "should." Notice that the readme file also says not to overwrite the files in your images folder or your files folder if you have images or downloadable files for your products.

The way I updated this plugin to minimize the hassle, was to use rsync: briefly the steps are noted below:

• Deactivate your plugin
• Get the zip file from instinct
• go to a tmp directory
• unzip it
• backup or make copies of the files you've changed
• rsync the updated files onto the existing plugin
• bring in your changes back into the plugin, e.g. Language files.
• Activate the plugin

# go to temp directory
cd /tmp
# unzip the file, you'll have a folder named wp-e-commerce.
unzip wp-e-commerce.3.7.5RC4.zip

# figure out which files you need to backup before the next steps.


# I usually save the language file that I've modified to .modded so when RSYNC
# overwrites the files over, I can just copy that "modded" file onto the new one
# or merge the differences in. In this case, from 3.7.4 to 3.7.5 (rc4) it looks like
# there are new definitions in there so rather than just writing over the file with our
# backup, we'll bring in the changes we've made into the new file. 
# In the case of the images and downloadable files, the Rsync job should preserve your
# files.

# rsync from /tmp/wp-e-commerce to wp-content/plugins
# use the -n option to test
# when ready, remove the "-n" option
# Note that Rsync will only update files which are newer in the plugin.
# generally this will work
# cd your wordpress root
rsync -P -rvvia /tmp/wp-e-commerce wp-content/plugins/

The changes I had made to the Language file EN_en.php were only a few so it was easy to bring them over to the new file. Please note that the new language file has new definitions so you don't want to just overwrite it with your old ones --I don't think. Instead just copy over your changes to the new file. Also note that RSYNC should preserve your image files and downloadable files.